When Steven Hawks is tempted by ice cream bars, M&Ms and toffee-covered
almonds at the grocery store, he doesn't pass them by. He fills up his
shopping cart.

It's the no-diet diet, an approach the Brigham Young University health
science professor used to lose 50 pounds and to keep it off for more than
five years.

Hawks calls his plan "intuitive eating" and thinks the rest of the country
would be better off if people stopped counting calories, started paying
attention to hunger pangs and ate whatever they wanted.

As part of intuitive eating, Hawks surrounds himself with unhealthy
foods he especially craves. He says having an overabundance of what's taboo
helps him lose his desire to gorge.

There is a catch to this no-diet diet, however: Intuitive eaters only
eat when they're hungry and stop when they're full.

That means not eating a box of chocolates when you're feeling blue or
digging into a big plate of nachos just because everyone else at the table
is.

The trade-off is the opportunity to eat whatever your heart desires
when you are actually hungry.

"One of the advantages of intuitive eating is you're always eating things
that are most appealing to you, not out of emotional reasons, not because
it's there and tastes good," he said. "Whenever you feel the physical urge
to eat something, accept it and eat it. The cravings tend to subside. I
don't have anywhere near the cravings I would as a 'restrained eater.'"

Hawks should know. In 1989, the Utah native had a job at North Carolina
State University in Raleigh and wanted to return to his home state. But
at 210 pounds, he didn't think a fat person could get a job teaching students
how to be healthy, so his calorie-counting began.

He lost weight and got the job at Utah State University. But the pounds
soon came back.

For several years his weight fluctuated, until he eventually gave up
on being a restrained eater and the weight stayed on.

"There are times when I overeat. I did at Thanksgiving," Peck said.
"That's one thing about Steve's ideas, they're sort of forgiving. On other
diets if you slip up, you feel you've blown it and it takes a couple weeks
get back into it. ... This sort of has this built-in forgiveness factor."

The one thing all diets have in common is that they restrict food, said
Michael Goran, an obesity expert at the University of Southern California.
Ultimately, that's why they usually fail, he said.

"At some point you want what you can't have," Goran said. Still, he
said intuitive eating makes sense as a concept "if you know what you're
doing."

Intuitive eating alone won't give anyone six-pack abs, Hawks said, but
it will lead to a healthier lifestyle. He still eats junk food and keeps
a jar of honey in his office, but only indulges occasionally.

"My diet is actually quite healthy. ... I'm as likely to eat broccoli
as eat a steak," he said. "It's a misconception that all of a sudden a
diet is going to become all junk food and high fat," he said.

In a small study published in the American Journal of Health Education,
Hawks and a team of researchers examined a group of BYU students and found
those who were intuitive eaters typically weighed less and had a lower
risk of cardiovascular disease than other students.

He said the study indicates intuitive eating is a viable approach to
long-term weight management and he plans to do a larger study across different
cultures. Ultimately, he'd like intuitive eating to catch on as a way for
people to normalize their relationship with food and fight eating disorders.

"Most of what the government is telling us is, we need to count calories,
restrict fat grams, etc. I feel like that's a harmful message," he said.
"I think encouraging dietary restraint creates more problems. I hope intuitive
eating will be adopted at a national level."